An empirical comparative evaluation of gestUI to include gesture-based interaction in user interfaces

Currently there are tools that support the customisation of users’ gestures. In general, the inclusion of new gestures implies writing new lines of code that strongly depend on the target platform where the system is run. In order to avoid this platform dependency, gestUI was proposed as a model-driven method that permits (i) the definition of custom touch-based gestures, and (ii) the inclusion of the gesture-based interaction in existing user interfaces on desktop computing platforms. The objective of this work is to compare gestUI (a MDD method to deal with gestures) versus a code-centric method to include gesture-based interaction in user interfaces. In order to perform the comparison, we analyse usability through effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Satisfaction can be measured using the subjects’ perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention to use. The experiment was carried out by 21 subjects, who are computer science M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. We use a crossover design, where each subject applied both methods to perform the experiment. Subjects performed tasks related to custom gesture definition and modification of the source code of the user interface to include gesture-based interaction. The data was collected using questionnaires and analysed using non-parametric statistical tests. The results show that gestUI is more efficient and effective. Moreover, results conclude that gestUI is perceived as easier to use than the code-centric method. According to these results, gestUI is a promising method to define custom gestures and to include gesture-based interaction in existing user interfaces of desktop-computing software systems.